CHEMISTRYPROJECT

THE LUCKNOW PUBLIC COLLEGIATE

CONTENTS

What is pollution?Modern AwarenessForms of pollutionSources & causesEffectsPollution

controlBibliographyRemarks

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I owe a great many thanks to many people who helped &supported me during the preparation of myproject.My deepest thanks to Lecturer, Ms. T.Sultana, the Guide of theproject for guiding and correctingvarious documents of mine with attention and care. She has taken pain to gothrough the project andmake necessary correction as andwhen needed.I would also like to thank my Institution & myfacultymembers without whom this project would have been adistant reality. I also extend my heartfeltthanks to myfamily and well-wishers.I thank everyone once again & especially God,who madeall thingspossible.

What is Pollution?

Pollution

is the introduction of contaminants into a naturalenvironment that causes instability, disorder, harmordiscomfort to the ecosystem i.e. physical systems or livingorganisms. Pollution can take the form ofchemicalsubstances or energy, such as noise, heat, or light.Pollutants, the elements of pollution, can beforeignsubstances or energies, or naturally occurring; whennaturally occurring, they are considered contaminantswhen they exceed natural levels. Pollution is oftenclassedas point source or nonpoint source pollution. TheBlacksmith Institute issues an annual list of theworld'sworst polluted places. In the 2007 issues the ten topnominees are located in Azerbaijan, China,India, Peru,Russia, Ukraine, and Zambia.

Modern awareness

Pollution became a popular issue after World War II, due toradioactive fallout from atomic warfare andtesting. Then anon-nuclear event, The Great Smog of 1952 in London,killed at least 4000 people. Thisprompted some of the firstmajor modern environmental legislation, The Clean Air Actof 1956.Pollutionbegan to draw major public attention in theUnited States between the mid-1950s and early 1970s,whenCongress passed the Noise Control Act, the Clean AirAct, the Clean Water Act and the NationalEnvironmentalPolicy Act.

the Hudson River resulted in a ban by the EPAon consumption of its fish in 1974. Long-termdioxincontamination at Love Canal starting in 1947 became anational news story in 1978 and led to theSuperfundlegislation of 1980. Legal proceedings in the 1990s helpedbring to light Chromium-6 releasesin California--thechampions of whose victims became famous. The pollution of industrial land gave riseto the nameBrownfield, a term now common in city planning. DDT wasbanned in most of the developedworld after thepublication of Rachel Carson's

Silent Spring

. The development of nuclear science introduced radioactivecontamination, which can remain lethallyradioactive forhundreds of thousands of years. Lake Karachay, named bythe World watch Institute asthe "most polluted spot" onearth, served as a disposal site for the Soviet Unionthroughout the 1950sand 1960s. Second place may go tothe area of Chelyabinsk U.S.S.R. as the "Most pollutedplace on theplanet".Nuclear weapons continued to be tested in the Cold War,sometimes near inhabited areas,especially in the earlierstages of their development. The toll on the worst affectedpopulations and thegrowth since then in understandingabout the critical threat to human health posed byradioactivity hasalso been a prohibitive complicationassociated with nuclear power. Though extreme care ispracticed inthat industry, the potential for disastersuggested by incidents such as those at Three Mile Island

and Chernobyl pose a lingering specter of public mistrust.One legacy of nuclear testing before mostforms werebanned has been significantly raised levels of backgroundradiation.Internationalcatastrophes such as the wreck of the AmocoCadiz oil tanker off the coast of Brittany in 1978 andtheBhopal disaster in 1984 have demonstrated theuniversality of such events and the scale on whicheffortsto address them needed to engage. The borderless natureof atmosphere and oceans inevitablyresulted in theimplication of pollution on a planetary level with the issueof global warming. Mostrecently the term persistentorganic pollutant (POP) has come to describe a group of chemicals such asPBDEs and PFCs among others. Thoughtheir effects remain somewhat less well understood owingto alack of experimental data, they have been detected invarious ecological habitats far removed fromindustrialactivity such as the Arctic, demonstrating diffusion andbioaccumulation after only a relativelybrief period of widespread use.Growing evidence of local and global pollution and anincreasinglyinformed public over time have given rise toenvironmentalism and the environmental movement,whichgenerally seek to limit human impact on theenvironment.

Forms of pollution

The major forms of pollution are listed below along with theparticular pollutants relevant to each ofthem:Air pollution, the release of chemicals andparticulates into the atmosphere. Commongaseouspollutants include carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide,chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrogenoxidesproduced by industry and motor vehicles.Photochemical ozone and smog are created asnitrogenoxides and hydrocarbons react to sunlight.Particulate matter, or fine dust is characterized bytheirmicrometer size PM

Radioactive contamination, resulting from 20thcentury activities in atomic physics, such as

nuclearpower generation and nuclear weapons research,manufacture and deployment. (See alphaemitters andactinides in the environment.)Thermal pollution, is a temperature change innatural water bodies caused by human influence, suchasuse of water as coolant in a power plant.

Visual pollution, which can refer to the presence of overhead power lines, motorway billboards,scarredlandforms (as from strip mining), open storage of trashor municipal solid waste.

Sources and causes

Air pollution comes from both natural and man-madesources. Though globally man made pollutantsfromcombustion, construction, mining, agriculture and warfareare increasingly significant in the airpollution equation.Motor vehicle emissions are one of the leading causes of air pollution. China, UnitedStates, Russia, Mexico, and Japan are the world leaders in air pollution emissions.Principal stationarypollution sources include chemicalplants, coal-fired power plants, oil refineries, petrochemicalplants,nuclear waste disposal activity, incinerators, largelivestock farms (dairy cows, pigs, poultry, etc.), PVCfactories, metals production factories, plasticsfactories,and other heavy industry. Agricultural air pollution comesfrom contemporary practices, whichinclude clear fellingand burning of natural vegetation as well as spraying of pesticides and herbicides

About 400 million metric tons of hazardous wastes aregenerated each year. The United States aloneproducesabout 250 million metric tons. Americans constitute lessthan 5% of the world's population, butproduce roughly25% of the world’s CO

, and generate approximately 30%of world’s waste. In 2007, China has overtaken the UnitedStates asthe world's biggest producer of CO

.In February 2007, a report by the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC), representing thework of 2,500scientists, economists, and policymakers from more than120 countries, said that humanshave been the primarycause of global warming since 1950. Humans have ways tocut greenhouse gasemissions and avoid the consequencesof global warming, a major climate report concluded. But inorderto change the climate, the transition from fossil fuelslike coal and oil needs to occur within decades,accordingto the final report this year from the UN'sIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC).Some of the more common soil contaminants arechlorinated hydrocarbons (CFH), heavy metals(such aschromium, cadmium–found in rechargeable batteries, andlead–found in lead paint, aviation fueland still in somecountries, gasoline), MTBE, zinc, arsenic and benzene. In2001 a series of press reportsculminating in a book called

Fateful Harvest

unveiled a widespread practice of recyclingindustrial byproducts into fertilizer, resulting in

thecontamination of the soil with various metals.

Ordinary municipal landfills are the source of manychemical substances entering the soil environment(andoften groundwater), emanating from the wide variety of refuse accepted, especially substancesillegally discardedthere, or from pre-1970 landfills that may have beensubject to little control in the U.S.or EU. There have alsobeen some unusual releases of polychlorinateddibenzodioxins, commonly called

dioxins

for simplicity,such as TCDD(2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin).Pollution can also be the consequence

Adverse air quality can kill many organisms includinghumans. Ozone pollution can cause respiratorydisease,cardiovascular disease, throat inflammation, chest pain,and congestion. Water pollution causesapproximately14,000 deaths per day, mostly due to contamination of drinking waterbyuntreatedsewageindeveloping countries. An estimated 700 millionIndianshave no access to a propertoilet, and 1,000 Indian children die of diarrhoeal sickness every day. Nearly 500 million Chineselackaccess to safe drinking water. 656,000 people dieprematurely each year inChinabecause of air pollution.InIndia, air pollution is believed to cause 527,700 fatalities ayear. Studies have estimated that thenumber of peoplekilled annually in the US could be over 50,000.Oil spills can causeskinirritationsandrashes. Noise pollution induceshearing loss,high blood pressure,stress, andsleepdisturbance.Mercuryhas been linked to developmental deficitsin children andneurological symptoms.Older people are majorly exposed to diseasesinduced by air pollution. Those with heart or lungdisordersare under additional risk.Children and infants are also at serious risk.Leadand otherheavymetalshave been shown to cause neurologicalproblems. Chemical andradioactivesubstances cancausecancerandas well as birth defects.

Environment:

Pollution has been found to be present widely in theenvironment. There are a number of effects ofthis:Biomagnificationdescribes situations where toxins (such asheavy metals) may pass throughtropiclevels, becoming exponentially more concentrated in the process.Carbon dioxideemissions causeocean acidification, the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's oceansas CO

becomes dissolved. The emission of greenhouse gasesleads toglobal warming which affects ecosystemsin many ways.Invasive speciescan out compete native species andreducebiodiversity. Invasive plants cancontribute debrisand biomolecules (allelopathy) that can alter soil andchemical compositions of anenvironment, often reducingnative speciescompetitiveness.Nitrogen oxidesare removed from the air byrain andfertilizeland, which can change the species composition of ecosystems.Smogand haze canreduce the amount of sunlightreceived by plants to carry outphotosynthesisand leads tothe productionof tropospheric ozonewhich damagesplants.Soil can become infertile and unsuitable for plants. Thiswillaffect otherorganismsin thefood web. Sulphur dioxideand nitrogen oxide can causeacid rain, whichlowers thepHvalue of soil.

Environmental healthinformation:

The Toxicology and Environmental Health InformationProgram (TEHIP) at theUnited States NationalLibrary of Medicine(NLM) maintains a comprehensive toxicology andenvironmental health web site thatincludes access toresources produced by TEHIP and by other governmentagencies and organizations.This web site includes links todatabases, bibliographies, tutorials, and other scientificand consumer-oriented resources. TEHIP also is responsiblefor the Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET®) anintegratedsystem of toxicology and environmental health databasesthat are available free of charge onthe web.TOXMAPis a Geographic Information System (GIS) that ispart of TOXNET. TOXMAP uses maps of theUnited States tohelp users visually explore data from theUnited StatesEnvironmental ProtectionAgency's (EPA) Toxics ReleaseInventoryandSuperfund Basic Research Programs.

Pollution control

Pollution control is a term used in environmentalmanagement. It means the control of

emissionsandeffluentsinto air, water or soil. Without pollution control,the waste products fromconsumption, heating, agriculture,mining, manufacturing, transportation and other humanactivities,whether they accumulate or disperse, willdegrade theenvironment. In the hierarchy ofcontrols,pollution preventionandwaste minimizationare more desirable than pollution control. In thefield of landdevelopment,low impact developmentis a similar technique for the prevention of urbanrunoff .